Biography

In November 1673, while still under age, Osborne was put up at a by-election for York by his father, but withdrew before the poll. In the following year he was given a Household post worth £1,000 p.a., and accompanied Lord Arlington on an embassy to the Netherlands. He was used as an intermediary to settle the financial claims of the Prince of Orange in negotiations between England and Holland in 1675-6. Despite his lack of legal qualifications he was granted in reversion to Sir Harbottle Grimston the office of master of the rolls, said to be worth £10,000 p.a. He was returned for Corfe Castle in 1677 with the help of Anthony Ettrick, without even standing for the borough. An inactive Member of the Cavalier Parliament he was appointed to five committees, including the committee of elections and privileges in one session, and a committee on an estate bill affecting his brother-in-law, Robert Coke. He was classed as ‘thrice vile’ by Shaftesbury in 1677, and as a member of the court party in both court and opposition lists of 1678. He acted as teller for omitting the word ‘traitorously’ from the first article of his father’s impeachment.3

At the first general election of 1679 Latimer stood for Buckingham, where he had acquired an interest by marriage. After a bitter contest, in which his father’s great enemy, the Duke of Buckingham, campaigned against him, there was a double return, but Latimer was elected by the corporation unopposed. Shaftesbury’s classification is indecipherable, though not beyond conjecture; but Lord Huntingdon marked him as court, and he voted against the exclusion bill. Otherwise he left no trace on the records of the first Exclusion Parliament. Although listed among the ‘unanimous club’ he was re-elected in the autumn, but he was again appointed to no committees in the second Exclusion Parliament. He desisted before the poll in 1681. He was then a member of the ‘Loyal Club’ founded at the time of the Popish Plot to support the Government. Before the meeting of the Oxford Parliament, he had approached every peer thought to be at all well-disposed before his father’s petition for bail was presented to Parliament, and his efforts won the highest praise from Lord Bath. On Grimston’s death in 1685, Latimer claimed his post, but it was given to a lawyer, Sir John Churchill. In that year he stood for Buckingham, giving £200 towards the building of a town hall for the borough, and promising to complete it if he were returned. After a severe contest, in which the Duke of Buckingham again intervened personally, he was defeated, and petitioned without result. He intended to stand there again for the abortive Parliament of 1688. But at the general election of 1689 he was involved in a double return at Knaresborough. He died of syphilis on 16 Feb. without taking his seat.4